Property investment manager Cordea Savills has appointed Keith Davidson and James Tarry to lead its entry into the European real estate debt market. Both join from Palatium Investment Management, where Davidson was managing director and Tarry was director.
Property investment manager Cordea Savills has appointed Keith Davidson and James Tarry to lead its entry into the European real estate debt market. Both join from Palatium Investment Management, where Davidson was managing director and Tarry was director.
The two hires are part of Cordea Savills' plans to set up a real estate lending platform with a view to transacting new senior and subordinated lending as well as acquiring performing and non-performing loans. The team will create investment vehicles to provide new investment finance or acquire existing financing arrangements at attractive risk-adjusted rates of return.
Davidson and Tarry have been appointed as co-heads of debt investment and one of the first initiatives will see them working closely with the Prime London Residential Development Fund, which was launched in October 2011 and which will seek to provide mezzanine finance to developers.
'The debt funding gap is likely to continue in the medium term. It was not unexpected that more money was raised for debt funds in Europe in the third quarter of last year than for equity funds,' commented Justin O’Connor, CEO of Cordea Savills.
Between them, Davidson and Tarry have 25 years of banking experience, 20 of which were in European commercial real estate debt markets at leading financial institutions. They first worked together in 2004 at German lender Eurohypo in the company’s structured finance business where Davidson headed the European mezzanine and structured finance team.
